A lecture series will highlight how the city’s history was shaped not just around the walls of the now-gone Fort, but also historically neglected areas beyond it
An aerial view of Byculla from within the premises of Sir JJ Hospital
What do you consider to be the suburbs in today’s Mumbai? Bandra? Vile Parle? Andheri? All those answers are correct, but not so if we were living in the 19th century. Back then, places like Byculla and Mazagaon were considered to be far-off. These were the places where affluent folk moved to from the Fort, to escape its congestion, at a time when Bombay was not as vast and spread out as it is today.
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They utilised their wealth to not just build a fashionable precinct, but also for public causes, their philanthropy literally set in stone in the form of schools and hospitals. But they also often ensured that these charitable ventures didn’t go unnoticed, and that they would be remembered for posterity for it. Why is Sir JJ Hospital named so? It’s because Sir Jamshetjee Jeejebhoy (or JJ) made a donation of '1 lakh to establish it in the mid-19th century, a fact he would be happy to know we are talking about even to this day.
These are some of the historical anecdotes that a lecture series, which the Asiatic Society’s Mumbai Research Centre is organising, will highlight. It’s called Beyond the Fort, the title itself emphasising how much a study of the city’s past has been concentrated on what went on within and immediately around those imposing walls in SoBo. Four experts — Kaiwan Mehta, Sarover Zaidi, Ramesh Babu and Alisha Sadikot — will take participants back in time, illuminating areas of the city that seem to have fallen through the crags of historical exploration. “There isn’t a book on Byculla that you can find easily,” Sadikot tells us, adding, “It’s a story of the city told through a dense neighbourhood.”
What she means is that the evolution of Byculla — or Kalbadevi, Mazagon and Bhendi Bazaar for that matter — explains the shifts in the sands of time. Sir JJ Hospital was established in 1843. Imagine what the area around it would have been like back then. Then imagine the mills that came up around it in the 20th century. And finally, think of what the area is like today, those same mills now lying in a shuttered state, but the din of 21st-century life ringing in the air. That’s Mumbai — or Bombay, if you prefer — a constant work in progress. It’s a city that really never stops.
From: Today till February 24
Log on to: pages.razorpay.com/beyondthefort
Cost: Rs 2,000
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